Johann Joachim Winckelmann (December 9, 1717 – June 8, 1768) is a German art historian and archaeologist.
He is a pioneering Hellenist who first articulates the difference between Greek, Greco-Roman and Roman art.
Winckelmann is one of the founders of scientific archaeology and first applied the categories of style on a large, systematic basis to the history of art.
Many consider him the father of the discipline of art history.
His will be the decisive influence on the rise of the neoclassical movement during the late eighteenth century.
His writings influenced not only a new science of archaeology and art history but Western painting, sculpture, literature and even philosophy.
Winckelmann's History of Ancient Art (1764) is one of the first books written in German to become a classic of European literature.
His subsequent influence on Lessing, Herder, Goethe, Hölderlin, Heine, Nietzsche, George, and Spengler has been provocatively called "the Tyranny of Greece over Germany."
Today, Humboldt University of Berlin's Winckelmann Institute is dedicated to the study of classical archaeology.
Winckelmann is homosexual, and open homoeroticism informs his writings on aesthetics.
This is recognized by his contemporaries, such as Goethe.
